E3, Day Two (2)

This straightforward way of communicating instead won the favor of many North American developers present.

They were used to Silicon Valley's geek-style exchanges, and Ken Kutaragi's technocratic manner went over very well here.

At the other end of the venue, a completely different discussion was taking place inside Nintendo's closed exhibition hall.

Shigeru Miyamoto sat on a folding chair between two television sets, holding a Super Famicom controller.

What he was leading was a small seminar on the fun of games.

Most of the participants were loyal developers from Nintendo's camp and a number of veteran game critics.

No one here was writing anything about technical direction on a whiteboard.

What he talked about was the rhythm of level design, the smoothness of difficulty curves, and how to use hidden elements to stir players' curiosity.

At this moment, the difference between the two companies' philosophies was laid bare in every fiber and strand.

Sony was teaching developers how to squeeze hardware performance to build 3D worlds, while Nintendo was teaching developers how to polish the fundamentals of the play experience.

Distributors shuttled between the two exhibition halls, assessing the commercial potential of the two paths.

Purchasing managers holding order books filled in enormous purchase quantities for Yoshi's Island and Super Donkey Kong 2. Nintendo's base remained solid.

Meanwhile, in Kentia Hall beneath South Hall, Bandai was staging a battle for spoils with a completely different style.

After repeated weighing and consideration, the top brass of Bandai's game division decided to put Gundam Battlefield Evolution completely on ice.

Mitsui Chuta locked that half-finished code, which could not even tell direction, on the servers in Tokyo and did not dare bring it to Los Angeles to make a spectacle of himself.

At Bandai's booth, only a few old games for the Mega